words

the older i get, the more i'm coming to recognize the power and influence of words.

we had an incident in our neighborhood last week that shocked me a bit. in fact, i had wavered back and forth whether or not to blog about it but it is an incident that impacted and impassioned us as a family.


we live in a neighborhood full of kids. my kids love living in our house for that very reason. they have spent an innumerable amount of moments with these kiddos....summer days that have run into late summer nights, sleepovers, after school, winter break, and so on. there have been countless games of kickball, dodgeball, wiffle ball, and football played in our back yard and basketball and four square in our driveway. they have riddden their bikes in the warm months and built snow forts when it turns cold. i've handed out a gazillion popsicles, chocolate chip cookies, and brownies to all of their dirty little hands. it's been a safe place for my kids to grow up. they will go into their adulthood with a lot of good memories from these days.

last week, though, there was a hurtful incident. there are a couple of older kiddos from another neighborhood that like to come over to our street and "stir the pot", as my grandma used to say. hurtful words and throwing rocks and the like. however, last week they took it too far. while one of my daughters was down playing in the front yard at one of her friend's house, these two got ahold of a permanent marker and took it to her face. then in big letters, they wrote the word "retard" across her neck.

ouch.

my kiddo was crushed. as i saw my neighbor friend on the sidewalk walking her down to me, i could tell immediately that my child had been gotten at the core....the tears and the embarrassment. i don't blame her. it would've gotten to my core too. all she kept saying over and over was, "they wrote retard on me, mommy". she had been labeled and somewhere down in that sweet, little heart of hers i knew she was wondering if that were true. we contacted the appropriate people to make sure nothing like this happened again in our neighborhood or at school. but my daughter needed more. she needed that wound to be binded up and healed. so i prayed that God would reach in her heart and go to the places that only He could go and do what only He could do.

i hurt deeply for her but i gotta say, i saw something very healing happen over the next few days. i saw the people in her life gather around her and speak words of love and affirmation and protection into her. her dad, her siblings, her friends, her small group leader, her principal, her teacher, her school counselor, our small group friends. i watched as the negative impact of that one word got swallowed up in the flood of other words meant for her encouragement and building up. it was a beautiful process to observe.


i may be more sensitive than most but i get moved deeply by the conversations, comments, and words that i encounter during a week. i probably don't let things roll off my back as easily as i should. on the other hand, i'm not shy about telling the people in my life that i love them and can't imagine doing life without them.

i think about conversations i've had just in the past 7 days alone and i can recognize how those words are helping to shape and mold my life. i had one conversation with my mom about how God uses pain and suffering to draw us to Him. i had another conversation with 2 pastors that breathed vision and direction into what God was going to bring about in the months to come. i spent an hour with my mentor and we talked about relationships and moving on when different seasons of your life come to an end. i received a phone call that held bad news of cancer spreading to the brain of a family member. i laughed my head off during a hay ride with our small group and walked through the entire night blown away that i even get the privilege of doing life with them. it goes on and on and on.

i think we may be losing the art of speaking intentionally into the lives of others. we live in a social networking world where it's easy to express our dislike about something that someone does without ever having to deal with the emotional fall out from it. words spoken without accountability. words flow off our tongues or through our keypads without a consciousness of what is being planted. there are people we encounter that just leave us feeling like we've been slimed on.

we build careers. we build churches. we build ministries. we build bank accounts. we build reputations. but do we build each other up in a way that helps heal, sustain, direct, and restore?


i'll take a face to face conversation any day. nothing fills my bucket more than looking eye to eye with someone and hearing where they are at in their journey. it requires intentionality. it requires time. it requires effort. it requires vulnerability. it requires me to measure my words and the weight of them. i'll pay that price, though. it's definitely one worth paying.